Backed by prominent investors including Polychain Capital and Sequoia China, Nervos Network aims to build a hybrid blockchain network for the enterprise

Nervos Network, a next-generation blockchain network for the enterprise, today announced it has raised $28 million from Polychain Capital, Sequoia China, Wanxiang Blockchain, FBG Capital, Blockchain Capital, Dekrypt Capital, Multicoin Capital, 1confirmation, Matrix Partners China, 1kx, and more.

Nervos will use the new capital to grow its product and engineering teams, accelerate development of its enterprise blockchain solutions, and ramp up strategic partnerships.

Founded by a team of blockchain and crypto veterans from Ethereum, imToken and Yunbi, Nervos is a network of interoperable protocols built on top of an open network and designed for enterprise applications. By providing a hybrid solution that combines the advantages of a public blockchain and an application chain, Nervos Network allows enterprises to build and deploy decentralized applications (dApps) without committing their entire tech stack to the blockchain.

“While there are undeniable benefits for enterprises that utilize blockchain technology to innovate and improve existing systems, enterprise adoption has been held back by a host of challenges like scalability, security and complexity,” said Jan Xie, co-founder and chief architect of Nervos. “The new funding will allow us to move full speed ahead as we build an infrastructure that will allow enterprises to reduce the costs of developing and deploying blockchain applications.”

Existing blockchain infrastructures are inadequate for enterprise use because they cannot simultaneously meet both security and performance requirements of enterprises. Public chains compromise scalability and performance for the sake of security, while permissioned chains forgo security in favor of transaction speed and throughput. The Nervos Network solves this problem by utilizing an innovative layered architectural design, which consists of a secure public chain (Layer 1) and a high-performance application chain (Layer 2). By leveraging both layers, Nervos will provide a complete set of real-world blockchain solutions for enterprises.

“We are excited by some of the activity happening in the Chinese crypto ecosystem and have been impressed by the Nervos team and their approach to building a high performance blockchain,” said Olaf Carlson-Wee, founder and CEO of Polychain Capital. “We think Nervos could become one of the leading major ecosystems and may spawn an array of opportunities. We are excited to partner closely with this talented team and support their outlier growth.”

Steven Ji, Partner at Sequoia China added, “There’s no shortage of blockchain projects but Nervos stands out because it has a clear mission and a well-defined plan to bring tangible and immediate benefits to the most promising segment of blockchain users.”

“The Nervos team is hands down the best technical team in China. Their contributions to Ethereum, imToken and the CITA blockchain have all become core innovations for the entire blockchain ecosystem, so I’m truly excited to support them as they take on their most ambitious challenge yet,” said Edith Yeung, advisor to Nervos and head of 500 Startups China.